I love traveling through Malaysia--friendly people, great food, and interesting sites. One place I've returned to often is Penang. In this article on ThaHoliday.com I outline five fun things to do there. Happy traveling!

I was extremely pleased to find out that my ode to baked goods, Kaili Crack Buns, has been featured on the Wanderlust and Lipstick women's travel site.

I wrote the essay while living in Guizhou Province, China, a few years ago. Kaili is a small city that foreign tourists usually only use as a jumping-off point to get to the ethnic minority villages of southeast Guizhou. Enjoy!

This week over at Novel Adventurers, we've been blogging about street food the world over. Take a look at the posts to see what you might snack on while taking a walk in South America, Iran, Italy--or, my own contribution, in China. But beware--you'll be hungry after reading!

On a related topic, I've just finished reading a few books that take place in different cultures, and, since I was thinking about street food, I took special note of the snacks and dishes that were described in them. Last night I finished Sue Grafton's V is for Vengeance. Her PI Kinsey Millhone is always going to McDonald's and other fast food joints--perfect for 1980s California where the book is set. In Shamini Flint's A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree, her Inspector Singh finds Cambodian food to be more difficult to come to terms with than the murders he is investigating. And in The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, the smells and tastes of the carnival food set the scene of the magic circus almost as well as her stunning visual descriptions.

I won't say I like reading about food as much as I like eating said food, but it's certainly an important part of the travel experience for me--and also, an important part of my reading experience.

Beth Green

Beth is an American freelance writer who has lived in Europe and Asia since 2003. She grew up on a sailboat and, though now a landlubber, still enjoys a peripatetic life. She writes articles and suspense about travel, expatriate living, and many other topics. Find out more.